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YouTuber investigates dangerous content creator

Young teens stare intently at their television screen as they watch their idol engulf the pool in his backyard into flames.

Jake Paul sits back and watches as the flames continue to grow to the point when his house, as wells as his neighbors, are in danger of being burned to the ground.

“The Mind of Jake Paul” is a documentary web series created by Youtuber, Shane Dawson, who investigates the mind of controversial fellow YouTuber, Jake Paul and the psychology of YouTubers.

YouTube is an American video sharing website which allows users all over the world to upload, view, rate, and share a variety of videos for millions of individuals to enjoy on a daily basis.

Popular YouTuber’s work for the site and make their entire livelihood producing content and receive paychecks based on the amount of views and subscribers they have.

One of YouTube’s more famous vloggers, Shane Lee Yaw, better known as Shane Dawson, is an American YouTuber, vlogger, and an all-time favorite for millions of teens around the world.

He began his channel in 2008, and as of 2016, he had amassed more than 3 billion views and more than 16.4 million subscribers to his channel.

Many loyal subscribers watched him transform through the years from a shy, young teenager to an outgoing, hilarious individual who shares his life full of fun adventures for the world to see.

Along with videos that depict the fun parts of his life, Dawson began posting a video series to his channel, which includes conspiracy theories and videos looking into the lives of fellow YouTubers.

On Sept. 25, 2018, Shane Dawson released a video titled “The Mind of Jake Paul,” which sparked a huge controversy in the YouTube community.

In his eight-part series, Dawson looks into the life of Jake Paul and his family at an attempt to help end conflicts and rumors that had been spreading across multiple social media platforms.

As a fan of Shane Dawson, I wasn’t sure how the series would turn out because of all the people and drama involved. As suspected, Dawson uncovered many hidden truths about Jake Paul and his personal life that I was not expecting. Near the end of the series, I did sympathize for Jake Paul and tried to watch the series with an open mind.

Dawson’s original purpose for creating the series was to have a look inside of Jake’s life and persona for his own curiosity, even though he knew it would spark a controversy with his fans.

Jake Paul, originally a Vine sensation, reached more than 1 million followers in just five months in the year 2013. By the time the app was discontinued, he had amassed more than 5 million followers.

He and his brother, Logan Paul, then turned to YouTube to continue entertaining their young viewers and launched a franchise, Team 10.

They began partnering with other social media stars, posting comedy sketches, vlogs, and music videos.

Jake Paul quickly became known for being the one to perform dangerous stunts, such as jumping over fast-moving cars and hanging from a 300-foot cliff, as a way to see how many views he could receive.

Due to Jake Paul’s insane stunts, it resulted in members of Team 10 leaving because of alleged abuse, among other reasons, and he quickly began losing thousands of subscribers.

In Dawson’s first video of the series, he plays a voice mail left by Jake Paul making claims that he is excited for the series that will be coming out, and that he is “putting a lot of trust in [Dawson] to share [his] side of the story.” He is willing to be as truthful as possible for past situations that had occurred.

Throughout the first video, Dawson makes strong allegations that Jake Paul may be a sociopath because of his actions in previous videos.

Dawson begins by conducting an interview with iNabber, a British Youtuber who is famous for his commentary and rants on YouTube stars.

iNabber starts off by stating there is more to Jake Paul than his viewers may realize, and the content on his channel may be staged in order to gain more popularity and/or profit.

An example iNabber used was the Team 10 house itself. In 2010, Jake Paul rented a house for $17,000 a month, and members in the house may have had to pay large amounts of money in order to have a spot on the team.

Also, by creating fake friendships and couples, it is believed that members of Team 10 were only there to gain popularity and to help push themselves into other careers, such as modeling or acting.

The controversies first began when Jake Paul supposedly kicked out his supposed girlfriend, Alissa Violet, for cheating on him. But soon after, in a video posted by Violet, she claims that they were never in a real relationship to begin with.

In her video, Violet continued to expose Jake Paul by informing viewers that she, along with others in the house, had signed a contract for 20 percent of all their profits for five years.

After Violet was kicked out from of Team 10 house and posted the video full of accusations, Jake Paul followed with a video claiming that Violet’s current boyfriend, Faze Banks, assaulted his assistant and that none or her allegations toward him were true.

Jake Paul tried to clarify in the video that he wasn’t trying to retaliate or target anyone in particular. However, it was eventually proven that his claims about Banks were false, though he has yet to take down the video claiming the abuse.

Whether these claims are true or not may never be fully uncovered. Either way, I’d say both YouTubers are in the wrong for attacking each other on the internet for the world to see, rather than dealing with their issues in person.

To many viewers, myself included, wonder if the allegations of abuse and other mistreatments are true, many members should have left sooner to avoid sparking drama. However, it would seem logical for them to stick around if they had signed a contract or had been spending large amounts of money to gain popularity.

Since then, Jake Paul has continued to perform outrageous stunts that not only put his life in danger, but the lives of his fellow co-workers as well.

Two former members of Team 10, Ivan and Emilio Martinez, better known as the Martinez twins, decided to step forward and admit that there was physical abuse and bullying that had been going on in the house. They claimed that it was hard for them to mentally continue working with Jake Paul.

Throughout the series, Dawson shows clips of videos from Jake Paul’s channel where he makes racist remarks toward the twins and continues to harass them.

Dawson later consults with sociologist Kati Morton during the second video of the series, “The Dark side of Jake Paul.” He spent most of the video discussing what defines a sociopath and Morton’s personal opinions of Jake Paul.

In the beginning, Morton first describes a sociopath as someone who lacks empathy.

“Imagine someone who sees something that majorly affects another person but they don’t seem to care,” Morton explained. “They don’t care how others feel, they don’t seem to care what happens to those around them, as long as it doesn’t affect them directly.”

According to Morton, sociopaths will also try to rationalize bad situations to place less of the blame on themselves and more towards others around them. Dawson questions if sociopaths live a robot-like lifestyle and they ‘wear different masks’ to impress other people around them. Morton explains that sociopaths will also try to turn attention on to themselves to make others feel bad for them. They will complain about losing money, or other situations, to be the center of attention.

Morton elaborates that they will even refuse to show the people close to them who they truly are, almost as if that person doesn’t exist anymore, because they have spent their whole life mimicking others or trying their hardest to fit in.

After the interview is almost complete, Dawson asked Morton her opinion on Jake Paul and if she would classify him as a sociopath.

“It’s possible, but I don’t know him,” Morton said. “People put on shows to be on YouTube, or personas. But looking back on the symptoms we went through, like not caring if people get hurt, he’s definitely done things that have put people in danger.”

Dawson even goes as far as asking Morton to tag along when he meets Jake Paul in person for the first time. He also informs her that they should not make it known that Morton is a therapist to keep Jake from concealing his true personality.

I wasn’t sure how Jake Paul would react to this once he found out he was being evaluated by a therapist. Although, later on in the video, Dawson discloses that Jake Paul sent him a text message saying “anything goes” and not to hold back as the series progresses.

In the third video, “The Family of Jake Paul,” Dawson opens with an apology to his fans for the backlash he has already received for his video series. He states that he has no intention of hurting anyone’s feelings or criticizing mental illnesses.

Dawson then reads messages that have been sent from Jake Paul’s even more controversial brother, Logan Paul, who admitted that both Paul brothers have sociopathic tendencies, but claimed neither him nor Jake were sociopaths.

Throughout the video, viewers are introduced to Greg Paul and Pamela Stepnick, better known as Vlogdad and Vlogmom. Dawson tries to pinpoint where the Paul brothers’ problems began, and it seems as if their issues circle around their father. It becomes apparent that their dad instilled a competitive nature between the two brothers at a young age. Even after becoming famous, the brothers are constantly competing with each other. They both make claims about being the favorite son, or even creating music videos with lyrics to pick on each other throughout the entirety of the song.

I cannot assume what happens behind closed doors, but after watching the videos, it is apparent that the Paul family lacks discipline and encourages stunts that place others in danger, even though they do not see it that way. Jake Paul even admits to abuse from his father in a past vlog, but laughed it off to seem as if it was a normal living situation.

His father, Greg Paul, also lives in the Team 10 house with Jake Paul and seems to try to take control of how things run throughout the house. He seems to try to use his son’s success and fame as an outlet to seek attention and become more controlling over the lives of his sons, moreso toward Jake than Logan.

After digging more into the Paul family, Dawson finds Pamela Stepnick’s YouTube channel. In one of her videos, Jake Paul says, “I’m glad that we can have real connections now. It’s just both of us vlogging each other through facetime.”

This part of the series struck home for me, and I would say this is when I began to sympathize with Jake Paul. It seems as if he must work hard to receive attention from his parents, and I would say that is something millions of teenagers can relate to on a personal level.

In the fifth video, “Enemies of Jake Paul,” Dawson sits down with one of Jake Paul’s longtime friends, Nick Crompton, who agreed to an interview to discuss what it was really like to live in the Team 10 house.

“I was super close with the Martinez twins before they left,” Crompton said. “It was a lot of fun up until the point when they came out with their video accusing Jake of the bullying.”

According to Crompton, and Jake Paul in a later video, he states that every stunt they ever did for their videos was staged. Before Jake Paul tried to perform a stunt, according to Crompton, he always asked for permission and made sure that everyone was OK before and after the video was filmed.

In the video released by the Martinez twins, they claimed that Jake Paul broke down the walls to their bedroom as a prank. However, during the interview, Crompton says that the team originally built the bedroom for the purpose of it to be torn down. It was a fake room, and supposedly the Martinez twins were fully aware of the prank that was going to take place.

Questions began to surface from Team 10 fans wondering that if it was staged, why would individuals who had been living in the house for so long be stepping forward making claims of abuse that had been happening?

“If Jake would have just come out and said that it was all fake, it would have debunked everything the Martinez twins were claiming to be true,” Crompton said. “Every time something happens, we don’t want to tell our viewers that everything is fake, so we just keep taking these hits.”

Crompton says that Jake Paul doesn’t want to step forward and admit everything is fake because of all the younger kids who are still watching, and it may push their fans away.

Crompton also puts an end to the rumor that the members of Team 10 are cast to be there. He says that everyone in the house has a role or a purpose. However, the things they do for their video productions are dramatized.

“There’s no way that anybody would ever be signed to Team 10 because they bribed their way in,” Crompton said. “Jake would never accept someone to be a part of the team if he thought they couldn’t be something.”

As everyone would like to believe, the 20 percent of profits that Jake Paul collects from his co-workers do not go straight into his pocket. Team 10 is a business, and Jake fulfills the role of CEO. The money was also used to help cover the cost of paying staff, such as their video producers and editors.

I was somewhat shocked to find out how the Team 10 house worked. The amount of stress Jake Paul experiences on a daily basis is incomprehensible.

Crompton also speaks about the issues involving Jake Paul’s father living in the house. According to him, people began leaving once Jake’s father tried to be involved. There were issues already happening before he showed up. But once he forced his way into the Team, Jake would leave the house to go back to Ohio to stay with his mom.

To everyone who lived in the house, it was obvious that Jake Paul and his father had their differences, and it was hard for the both of them to get along while living together. Crompton also says that Greg Paul pushed his way up into an authority position in order to make decisions for the group.

This is the reasoning behind why Crompton left Team 10, because he saw that Greg Paul was trying to control everyone in the house and realized he didn’t want to be a part of it anymore.

“That’s how Team 10 unfortunately works,” Crompton said. “If someone leaves the team, then it’s automatically assumed that there’s a bigger issue and are kind of shunned. I’ve tried to get in contact with Jake a few times since I’ve left, and I haven’t heard anything back.”

In the last three videos of Dawson’s series, all the topics are repetitive. Throughout the sixth episode, therapist Kati Morton returns to the series. After a full day of evaluating Jake Paul, she determines he may not be a sociopath, but he struggles with coping and sorting out his emotions.

Dawson also circles back to Alissa Violet in the seventh episode. During an interview with her, she restates her claims of abuse or mistreatment. Since Violet and Jake Paul are sharing two different stories, it may never be clear as to what truly happened during her time in the Team 10 house.

In the eighth and final episode, Dawson sits down with Jake Paul to address all the controversies and let him have an opportunity to be honest with his fans.

Jake Paul goes into more details about his relationship with his father, and that Greg Paul asked his sons to move back with him to Ohio for a stronger father-son relationship.

He also dug into the controversy with the Martinez twins, saying, “they were exaggerating their experiences.” Jake Paul admitted to doing ridiculous pranks, and that he has made many mistakes with his content.

Jake also discusses the backlash he received from his brother’s Suicide Forest video that was posted on Logan Paul’s channel. Jake Paul lost two or three brand deals, and even though there was a negative impact, Jake Paul claimed that it actually brought his family close together.

Finally, Jake Paul spoke about his situation with Alissa Violet. He admits that they both hurt each other for too long. He acknowledged that it was his fault that she was upset and how he was emotionally affected after she left.

The whole series received a lot of backlash, especially the last episode of the docu-series. Many viewers thought that Dawson wasn’t critical enough of Jake Paul’s actions and seemed to excuse his problematic behavior.

I thought the series was decent. However, I do think Shane Dawson could have done a better job of organizing and executing the series. A part of me does feel bad for everything Jake Paul has gone through, and I would think that haters of Jake Paul will leave fewer hateful comments on his page after watching the series.After completing “Inside the Mind of Jake Paul,” I give the series an eight out of 10.